The primary goal of this site is to provide mature, meaningful discussion about the Vancouver Canucks. However, we all need a break some time so this forum is basically for anything off-topic, off the wall, or to just get something off your chest! This forum is named after poster Creeper, who passed away in July of 2011 and was a long time member of the Canucks message board community.

Street riots in Athens. Was there with my family in June. We did some shopping near the Syntagma Square, just across from the parliament. That's the centre of the storm now. Bloody demonstrators tearing the whole place down; a cinema in flames.

I have been following the Iranian business fairly closely. Many countries have nuclear weapons at this point. Pakistan and India, Israel, France, England, Russia and CHina. I am sure there are more. WHo says the Iranians should not have atomic or nuclear energy? We here listen to how the Iranians say this about Israel and that about Israel. Their leaders are reported as saying they will wipe Israel off the map. Are you seeing a common thread here? I do not think any country needs nuclear weapons but they have them. The ISraelis hid theirs for decades and just a wild guess here but I doubt they want the UN counting them and traipsing through their plants. Apparently teh sovreign nation of Iran is not entitled to the same courtesy and we are told if they do develop them they will use them to at least destroy Israel. Up to the present day teh only country to use them was that good old boy christian nation known as beloved of God. ANd they did it twice. Certainly invading the Japanese home islands would have cost America a lot of soldiers but oe would think a demostration would suffice. No. Three days later they did it again and the first time they did it some of their people were not sure that it would not set off a chain reaction and blow us all to smithereens. I guess my point on this political thread is how much we are lied to by everyone. When it is possible to strip away the lies by looking only at events, over the last 70 years America has done war crimes comparable to anyone. Why then do we insist Iran must allow us to see their nuclear plants and why are they not allowed to join the armageddon club if others have joined? Are they less than us? Are they too religious. Did not stop Israel or Pakistan. Is it possibe and maybe probable that none of us, myself included, do not have a fucking clue what international truth is or even if it exists. THe Israelis have a right to exist. What happened to them is something that we must take responsiblity for. The Palestinians have a right too but the rights do not double our fun or even make a wrong. They are simply right and like the old song goes, 'everybody is right and nobody is wrong'. WHy are the Iranians wrong and us right? WE are deeply affecting their population with our boycott. It is not hurting the top guys. Sure they seem nuts. So do the others.

I've often stated that I understand the reasoning behind Hiroshima, especially considering that not even the scientists at the time fully understood the long term effects and dangers of exposure to radioactive matter.

But I have a really hard time understanding how dropping the bomb on Nagasaki can be defended.

The Japanese government had no chance to fully assess what had happened at Hiroshima before the next bomb fell, killing an additional 60,000-80,000 civilians.I think they should have been given more time. And if the purpose was to show you had more than one, why not drop the second one on some deserted island?

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

Dwight Eisenhower

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons."

"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

Admiral William D. Leahy

"The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."

"...the Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945...up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; ...if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs."

Herbert Hoover

"When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

Norman Cousins quoting General Douglas MacArthur

"I made one great mistake in my life, when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification - the danger that the Germans would make them."

Albert Einstein

Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?

Per wrote:I've often stated that I understand the reasoning behind Hiroshima

y...y...you.... YOU FIEND YOU!!!

I don't particularily like the concept, but given the circumstances I can understand and to a certain extent accept the reasoning:The Japanese fought to the last man on Iwo Jima. Something similar was expected on the mainland, and would have led to hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of casualties.If dropping the bomb could end the war quicker, it might actually save lives.Add to that that they pretty much thought it was just a big ass bomb, there was very little understanding of the long term effects of radiation exposure.The conventional bombings of Tokyo and Dresden killed more people and were at least as barbaric.

Thus I can accept the reasoning behind dropping ONE bomb.I will never understand though how they could find a morally valid rational for dropping the second one.

Perhaps they just really hated gooks?

And then again, people in the know, like Eisenhower, Leahy and MacArthur were convinced that the Japanese were ready to surrender anyway, which kind of pulls out the mat from under the arguments for dropping it on Hiroshima as well. Still, it's very easy to criticise in hindsight. At the time, given the circumstances, I can see why dropping it on Hiroshima seemed reasonable.

Aren't you the guy who was whining incessantly about a little collateral damage in Gaza??

Well. The palestinians are lucky they're not "gooks" and you're not Israel eh wot?

This is what I don't get about modern warfare. Gone is the complete demonization of the foe including women and children. After all, they breed like rats. Today's toddler is tomorrows revenge seeking intifada.

You want 1000 year war. Ask an Irishman, ask a Muslim, ask a Jew, ask a German, ask a Serb, ask a Croat ......

Topper wrote:This is what I don't get about modern warfare. Gone is the complete demonization of the foe including women and children. After all, they breed like rats. Today's toddler is tomorrows revenge seeking intifada.

You want 1000 year war. Ask an Irishman, ask a Muslim, ask a Jew, ask a German, ask a Serb, ask a Croat ......